Cherry-picked: New Reads for August

It’s a new month, and that means new reads! The booksellers here at Parnassus love picking out books we think you will love, and we think we have done an exceptional job this month. So without further ado, read on for 29 recommendations for your next read!

FICTIONRecommended by Everyone! Tom Lake

By Ann Patchett

Are we biased towards loving Ann’s books? Sure. We’ll own up to it. But y’all, Tom Lake is a masterpiece. Cat calls it “that rare novel that does so many things to absolute perfection.” Katie says it’s a “moving novel from one of the greatest writers of our time.” Some other words our staff used to describe it: magnificent, vibrant, marvelous, pure delight, exquisite, magical, instant classic. But if you don’t want to take our word for it, check out these incredible reviews from Kirkus, The Washington Post, Publishers Weekly and the Wall Street Journal.

Ann is on tour! Check out all the cities she’ll be visiting here.

Recommended by Everyone! Do Tell: A Novel

By Lindsay Lynch

Speaking of books by our fellow Parnassians, we all love Do Tell by Lindsay Lynch! Sarah calls it “engaging and immersive.” RJ says the book is “full of finely crafted historical details and fascinating characters.” Perhaps Cheryl put it best: “This novel is like discovering an old black and white movie gem on TV.”

Lindsay will be joining Ann on select tour stops! See the details here.

Recommended by Lindsay Mrs. S

By K. Patrick

A queer love story set at an English boarding school? I’m absolutely in. K. Patrick’s Mrs. S is a luscious read, filled with gorgeous prose and plenty of forbidden yearning.

Recommended by Jake Silver Nitrate

By Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Silver Nitrate follows a sound editor and a fading actor working to restore a long lost cult horror film, one which just so happens to be a Nazi occultist experiment. But when the supernatural elements of the film start bleeding into their real lives, the pair must solve the mystery of what’s really going on before it’s too late. Silvia Moreno-Garcia is always excellent and this is some of her best work yet.

Recommended by Jennifer Immortal Longings (Flesh & False Gods #1)

By Chloe Gong

Chloe Gong’s adult fantasy debut, Immortal Longings is an action-packed marriage of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra and The Hunger Games. Meet and fall in love with a cast of morally grey characters as they fight to the death for change and revolution. This book will have you on the edge of your seat.

Recommended by Cat After the Funeral and Other Stories

By Tessa Hadley

Tessa Hadley is a master at prying into the depths of everyday relationships and unspooling the consequences of her characters’ actions. This showcases those strengths and manages to be thought provoking and fresh. Her characters in each story take immediate shape within a matter of sentences and I couldn’t put this collection down.

Recommended by Kathy Lady Tan’s Circle of Women: A Novel

By Lisa See

How can this be a captivating novel about a woman physician in 15th century China? Lisa See draws you in with the creating of the character Lady Tan Yunxian and her learning to be a woman as well as a woman-doctor. This is a woman’s book, no question about it, also un-put-downable. I loved it!

Recommended by Hannah P. Cutting Teeth: A Novel

By Chandler Baker

Biting seems like normal behavior in a preschool classroom—until a teacher is found dead and the only witnesses/suspects are the adorable and bloodthirsty children. More than just a murder mystery or a tale of childhood vampirism, this clever and wild novel reflects on the sacrifices of motherhood and the ways that kids can drain us.

Recommended by Sissy Time’s Mouth: A Novel

By Edan Lepucki

While Lepucki pulls the past into her novel, there’s nothing sweet or sentimental about her writing. Generational trauma chases her characters as they run from one another, and collide with one another. She’s a master of creating a beautiful setting that can hold deep darkness. While one child runs from pain and forms a cult, another child runs from the cult to free himself from pain. Gripping!

Recommended by Katie To Have and to Heist

By Sara Desai

To Have and to Heist is a wild ride from start to finish. Think Oceans 11 with serious screwball romantic comedy energy. Desai is known for loveable, awkward leads caught in the crosshairs of cultural expectations and hijinks. This newest book is sexy and laugh out loud funny.

Recommended by RJ Camp Damascus

By Chuck Tingle

Chuck Tingle’s traditional publishing debut brings all the chills of a classic summer horror blockbuster while reckoning with the very real horrors of queer religious abuse. Rose, a young autistic woman, must uncover the secrets of her isolated church’s suspiciously “successful” gay conversion camp after learning her own connection to the camp goes deeper than she ever knew.

Recommended by Heath Speech Team: A Novel

By Tim Murphy

Now well into their 40s, former members of the high school speech team decide to confront their coach who made disparaging and lasting comments to each of them. This is about the power of words and how they can affect us, but there are also some hilarious moments. Come for the totally rad 80’s references and stay for the heart.

Recommended by Maddie  Ripe: A Novel

By Sarah Rose Etter

Ripe is a gut punch. In it, we follow Cassie as she struggles in a demanding and demoralizing Silicon Valley tech job and goes through her days constantly accompanied by a floating black hole that follows her at all times (yeah, seriously). This book is brilliantly intriguing from the first page. It is smart, it is poignant, and in the best way possible, it is weird.

Recommended by Aly The Apology

By Jimin Han

Jeongha is dead. At age 105 she was hit by a bus, and that’s where our story begins. In this beautiful and fantastical tale of what women are willing to do for their families, whether right or wrong, we see just how vulnerable the strongest among us are when it comes to love.

Recommended by Ashby The Housekeepers

By Alex Hay

Who doesn’t love a heist novel? Even better when it includes a female gang and is set in Edwardian England. Mrs. King, gang leader, grew up in a world of con artists but became the respectable housekeeper of one of the grandest homes in Mayfair with countless treasures. After she is fired, she plans her revenge.

Recommended by Rachel Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution

By R. F. Kuang

You’ve heard of modern day classics, but have you read a novel that seems to have existed for centuries before? Babel has been lying in wait, watching the world with a sharp eye before determining the exact time to make her violent entrance, and oh, how glad I am to hold this book in my hands. Reading may reveal many terrors that you have aided in creating. You won’t be ready, but you must read.

Recommended by Cheryl The Bookbinder: A Novel

By Pip Williams

It is WWI and twins Peg and Maude work for Oxford University Press binding reissues of classics. The twins have been on their own since age 16 but live on a boat with kind neighbors. Peg yearns to go to college and become a writer but feels she must look after her sister with her different abilities. The chapters are named by the book that they are binding. It is a joy to read as a bibliophile.

Recommended by Sissy The Beast You Are: Stories

By Paul Tremblay

I rarely choose short story collections, but the spooky ones get me every time. Tremblay has several distinct, frightening tales in here, but they are interrelated in theme, time, and even characters. A must read for those who love a little fear!

Recommended by Rachel Wolfsong (Green Creek #1)

By TJ Klune

Magical forest with gay werewolves whose yearning spans literal decades. My heart skipped so many beats while watching Ox and Joe fall in love and deal with the consequences of caring so deeply for someone in a world full of many dangers.

Recommended by Katie Tastes Like Shakkar: A Novel (If Shakespeare Were an Auntie #2)

By Nisha Sharma

This chaotic enemies-to-lovers is perfectly sweet and absolutely spicy. Bobbi Kaur, a wedding planner determined to prove her worth to her family, is forced to work with her nemesis, the hottest chef in town, “Bunty” Paddy. Not just colleagues, they also happen to be the MOH and BM in the wedding. Add a sprinkle of sabotage and a dose of sexual tension and it gets hotter than a kitchen fire real quick.

Recommended by Chelsea The Militia House: A Novel

By John Milas

This debut horror, set in 2010 Afghanistan during the war, focuses on Corporal Loyette, who is questioning both his dull assignment and his motivation for enlisting. After a visit to a “haunted” Soviet-era militia house, the line between the real and surreal starts to blur, making Loyette even more unmoored. Perfectly paced and full of visceral detail, The Militia House is a fantastic addition to the horror canon.

Recommended by Rachel The Centre

By Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi

How far is society willing to go for advancement? The Centre ponders this question amid the backdrop of gothic horror, obsessive female friendship, secret societies, and an ending to match Ari Aster’s Misdsommar. No line is left uncrossed.

NONFICTIONRecommended by Ashby Baking Yesteryear: The Best Recipes from the 1900s to the 1980s

By B. Dylan Hollis

This baking blast from the past is written by an unemployed piano player turned funny TikTok phenom. His specialty? Vintage recipes. He selected 101 recipes from the 1900s to the 1980s. I read it like a book, enjoying the stories and background. Sample recipes: peanut butter styrofoams, Velveeta fudge, candle salad, the Robert Redford, pork cake, the Watergate AND Spaghettios Jell-o mold.

Recommended by Chelsea When Crack Was King: A People’s History of a Misunderstood Era

By Donovan X. Ramsey

An incredibly well-written debut, When Crack Was King mixes history with anecdotes of four people whose lives were touched by crack. His writing does what the best nonfiction does: examines history and encourages the reader to fully examine and understand the legacy of that history. Thoroughly researched yet accessible and engrossing, this is my favorite nonfiction book of the year.

CLASSICS & BACKLISTRecommended by Chelsea Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family

By Robert Kolker

This came out in 2020, and I absolutely did not have the bandwidth to read it then. I revisited it this month via audiobook. Hidden Valley Road‘s focus is the Galvin family where six of the twelve children developed schizophrenia by the mid 1970s. Kolker expertly weaves together the strands of history of the Galvins, the disease, and the treatment of mental health in the United States into a compelling narrative.

Recommended by Rae Ann The Fortunes of Jaded Women: A Novel

By Carolyn Huynh

I loved this amazing novel about a family of estranged women and the psychic prediction that brings them together again. Now out in paperback!

Recommended by Ashby Cinnamon and Gunpowder: A Novel

By Eli Brown

Why should pirates eat bad food? Pirate, Mad Hannah Mabbot kidnaps chef Owen Wedgwood. She tells him he will be spared by making an exquisite meal each Sunday. Owen works miracles with what he scavenges on board. He wows her with bread, keeping the sourdough starter safe under his shirt during a battle. Entertaining characters like Mr. Apples, a pirate who knits. And there is love…

Recommended by Lindsay Glaciers

By Alexis M. Smith, Maris Kriezman (Foreword by)

Whenever I talk about my love for tiny books, I’m usually thinking about Alexis M. Smith’s Glaciers. Written in short vignettes, it follows one day in the life of Isabel, who works repairing library books. The vignettes are deceptively ordinary–childhood memories, meditations on beloved articles of clothing or objects–but over the course of 110 pages, they accumulate into something truly beautiful and profound.

First Editions Club: August Selection The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store: A Novel

By James McBride

Before becoming one of the most celebrated writers of our time, James McBride was a celebrated saxophone player. Once you know this, you can see it everywhere in his work. He doesn’t just write novels and nonfiction (his brilliant memoir, The Color of Water, has sold over two million copies), he writes music, and while The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store isn’t a novel about music, it is certainly a novel informed by music. McBride has an ability to take a complex line of narrative out farther than you might think possible, then reel it in with all the spontaneity and structural underpinnings of jazz. His stories, characters and language refuse to lie flat on the page. They exist as life and sound. How can something be both free and mathematical? It helps if you’re James McBride.

James McBride is a writer and a musician and a hundred other things besides. He’s also Black and Jewish. His mother, whose parents owned a grocery store in Georgia, was an immigrant from Poland, his father a minister in Harlem. (Again, if you haven’t read The Color of Water, you must.) The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store springs from the intersection of those two communities, and McBride proves himself to be fluid in both languages. The storylines are opposing one minute and harmonizing the next. What unites them is the common humanity, the loving, damaged, striving nature of human existence, or, to put it another way, the enormous heart in life. The heart is why I love this book so much.

Enjoy.

Ann Patchett

More about our First Editions Club: Every member receives a first edition of the selected book of the month, signed by the author. Books are carefully chosen by our staff of readers, and our picks have gone on to earn major recognition including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the PEN/Faulkner Award. Plus, there’s no membership fee or premium charge for these books. Build a treasured library of signed first editions and always have something great to read! Makes a FABULOUS gift, too.